Preservatives have wide applications in fields like personal care, industrial, health and hygiene, pharmaceutical and wood protection. Preservatives can be a single agent or a blend of multiple agents.
Ideally, a preservative has broad-spectrum activity against all types of microorganisms at various pH levels. The preservative should also have high efficacy so that a minimum amount of the preservative can be used to save cost and to avoid or reduce any possible adverse effects caused by the preservative. Also, it is desirable that the preservative is stable to any changes in temperature encountered during manufacturing, packaging, and shipping as well as during storage of the preservative. Further, an ideal preservative is physically and chemically compatible with ingredients of different application systems so that one preservative can suitably be incorporated in various products.
In the past, various different preservatives and preservative blends have been suggested. Many preservatives in the past have comprised synthetic chemicals, meaning chemicals that do not occur naturally in nature and must be synthesized in a manufacturing facility. For many personal care products, such as cosmetic compositions, however, recent emphasis has been placed on making the compositions from naturally occurring materials. Thus, there is a need in the art for a preservative or preservative blend that is all or substantially all natural and that can replace and eliminate traditional synthetic preservative systems.
A need also exists for a preservative or preservative blend that can provide other useful properties to the composition in which it is incorporated.